Poverty causes more mistrust than race

British people are six times more likely to mistrust their neighbours because
of poverty than racial differences, researchers claim.

People living in deprived areas are significantly more likely to be uneasy about each other than those in more affluent areas, regardless of how they look, a study foundPhoto: CHRISTOPHER FURLONG / GETTY IMAGES

By Nick Collins

7:30AM GMT 29 Nov 2010

People living in deprived areas are significantly more likely to be uneasy about each other than those in more affluent areas, regardless of how they look, a study found.

The argument that multiculturalism causes suspicion and malaise between strangers was strongly rejected by the study, which found "no evidence" that there is more trust in "homogenous" neighbourhoods.

Poverty is also responsible for a lack of "social capital" in Britain which results in less volunteering and people having fewer close friends and lower levels of happiness and perceived quality of life, researchers found.

Patrick Sturgis, one of the researchers, said: "Basically it is poverty not race that makes people uneasy and not trust each other.

"If it were somehow possible to make every neighbourhood in Britain completely ethnically homogenous, it would have a barely perceptible impact on the extent to which the British trust people in their neighbourhoods."

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Government surveys of more than 25,000 people in 4,000 neighbourhoods were analysed by academics from the University of Southampton's National Centre for Research Methods.

Mr Sturgis said the research, to be published in the British Journal of Political Science, countered claims by Harvard academic Robert Putnam who claimed that people "act like turtles" when confronted with diversity.

Putnam, who visited Downing Street several times under Labour, wrote in 2007: "Inhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbours regardless of the colour of their skin".

Mr Sturgis said in the last five years immigration has been blamed for a lack of community cohesion and civic engagement, but insisted people had confused poverty with diversity.

He added: "In reality, immigrants do find themselves living in poorer areas so we can see how the two issues have been confused."